Shares on major markets ended little changed on Friday as weak corporate earnings offset better U.S. economic data, though investors remained concerned about slowing global growth.
Poor earnings outlooks from major companies such as Apple and Amazon, South Korea's Samsung, and Renault and Ericsson in Europe contrasted with better U.S. third-quarter economic growth and signs of improvement in China's economy.
For the week, the Dow was down 1.8 percent, the S&P 500 was down 1.5 percent and the Nasdaq was down 0.6 percent.
Lower revenues have been a concern this U.S. corporate earnings season. Just 36.9 percent of S&P 500 companies so far have reported revenue that beat forecasts, compared with the 62 percent that typically exceed expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.(commentary & photo courtesy of Reuters)
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Last week we raised the stops on many of RSI’s portfolio holdings. All positions are doing well in this recent market downturn, but the market action in recent weeks has given me an incentive to examine and adjust the stops. This week RSI picked another (last week RSI picked ProShares Short QQQ (PSQ) short fund:
As I have mentioned in the past I’m not wild about funds that are short the market or short a particular sector. With that said, if there is a market downturn, this might be a good candidate to own. This fund shorts the small cap index, the Russell 2000. Let’s face it, the overall market is quite toppy and we may be into another bear market.
I have shown the basic R 2000 index fund, IWM, below to show that it isn’t doing too badly. In fact, it is still within its upslope channel. However, if it were to close below $72/share I think that would be a sign to jump on RWM and/or PSQ.
I hope you are having a great weekend.